Sunday, February 23, 2014

I am elated that the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games ended with no sign of terrorism, collapse, or any type of disaster, as many American/British media were predicting before the Games began.

The games were spectacular, but not because I could watch them on NBC....

I actually watched the games live, without interruption, and with no NBC interference. I accessed the games online, using VPN software to access European TV stations. Superb. Events without comments and I could really enjoy listening to the sounds of the athletes and the games without commercials and American bull droppings.

The only really bad thing about people who could not access European channels is that NBC has a TV monopoly on broadcasting Olympic games in the US.

Complete and utter failure. NBC is absolutely pathetic. USA-centric and incomplete coverage, inability to show how the US is part of a global family. Totally disappointing and infuriating. NBC sucks!

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Last week I ran into a very affordable Sangiovese at Trader Joe's. I purchased a whole case as it was only$3.99/bottle.

I had never had this Grifone wine before last week and I was very skeptical. I thought we were going to end up using the wine for cooking.

As it turned out, the wine is medium bodied and crisp. It has a clarity of taste that makes it very easy to drink with ravioli or heavier pasta dishes. It is not rich or heavy but it is pleasant and uplifting.

Drink up! At less than $4 a bottle, the Grifone Sangiovese is superb as daily table wine. Unpretentious, simple, and direct. I find it to be a perfect companion to most kinds of sheep cheese.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Victoria Nuland made a questionable comment towards the European Union and this has enraged quite a few observers, including me.

However, for both Ukraine and Europe alike, US offers a much better option than Russia. One needs not look too far to notice that almost every place where the US economic psyche is/was present the people in those places are better off than any alternatives. They are better off compared to both before when the US presence began and by looking at countries where the US economic spirit could not be instilled.

South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and even China are much better off after being and growing under the American mentality than before that.

Eastern Europe, Cuba, and North Korea are examples of places where the American economic model could not be implemented because of Soviet tanks and pressure. All these places were much worse off than the alternative. The alternative is 100% American. No ifs, buts, or debates.

Even now if you go to almost any Eastern Europe country, from Poland to Romania, the vast majority of people will tell you that Russia is evil, pure and unadulterated evil. They are like a bad moonshine that, when consumed, it destroys everybody's health. Slowly but unequivocally.

Russia cannot win as they have no moral backbone. They claim that they liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazis but they forget to mention that the price of that act was pure slavery for the people of Eastern Europe for almost 50 years.

They did not free Eastern European countries to make those countries better off than before. No! They did it so that it could run despicable experiments on them. They did it so that Russia could develop and totally control a shield against the West. Miserable bastards! Disgusting pigs!

Individual freedoms (speech, association, religion, etc.), freedom of the press, economic determinism, individual choice, creativity, market value, market forces, wide-spread development, growth, accountability, independence of the judiciary, value of education are all concepts that make the American psyche much more valuable, when applied as a package, to any other country on the planet.

Russia has very few of these memes and, because of that, it cannot win long term battles. However, it can win localized battles (such as in Ukraine). But, at some point, those battles will have to be redone and I have little doubt that the US psyche will win over. No doubt whatsoever.

I am not even sure that Russia will win the battle over Ukraine.

The EU and its mentality can win in Ukraine and the US will have to back the EU, even if the US thinks that the EU is not very strong. At the end of the day, the US is much closer to the EU than the EU would like to openly acknowledge.

Nuland's 'f...k EU' remark was actually a very friendly remark, when we take a much broader perspective.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

It is almost certain that the Russian Federation released the 'Fuck the EU' recording of Victoria Nuland.

Russian Federation released the Fuckland recording to the public as quickly as they could. Even though the US may classify this fact as 'dirty', it is, without many doubts, unmistakable that the US government's credibility has fallen to new lows, lows not seen since the Vietnam war.

Here are the main arguments supporting my statements.

1. NSA spying revelations which show that the US pays only lip service to the concept of 'individual privacy' (a constitutional sanctioned right);

2. Relative number of people incarcerated in the US prisons shows that the US judicial system has been taken over by private interests as more and more prisons are operated by private corprations;

3. The Guantanamo prison is still operational after more than 10 years since it was opened by the Bush administration which shows that the US can bend the laws just like David Beckham could bend the soccer ball while pretending that human rights are the most important driver in the conduct of US foreign policy;

4. The FED's quantitative easing (printing money at will, with no direct authority from the Congress) by buying US debt at an incredible rate which -directly or indirectly- makes the US dollar the most quantitatively important currency in the world;

5. Wealth distribution and inequality. The US has the highest GINI coefficient of all developed nations.

I love the US and what it stands for, but when Victoria Nuland makes point-blank statements to the Ukrainian US ambassador that we should 'Fuck the EU' then I feel like the US has lost all its ability to influence global policy makers, as who is to say that some European policymakers do not shout 'Fuck the US' (behind closed doors)?

The radicalization of US diplomacy will become more and more obvious and other countries will start to push back with more and more strength.

The singularity and strength of the US diplomacy has started to become more and more militaristic and this will only embolden Russia and China and make them, even more determined than now, to pursue their agenda via military spending expansion rather than 'values agendas'.

The US used to stand for human rights and that does not fly anymore. The US used to stand for economic freedom and that does not fly anymore, given the complexity of tax code(s) in the US. The US used to stand for relative equality between all Americans and that does not fly anymore in the face of wealth inequality we are witnessing. The US used to stand for top notch infrastructure and that is starting to fall by the wayside.

Friday, February 7, 2014

Are you f..ing kidding me? The US is warning Americans traveling to the Olympic games in Sochi that they should 'expect no privacy' while in Russia and accessing Russian networks. What? Am I reading this correctly?

Have we not just learned that the US spies on everybody indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are in the US or not, regardless of whether they are Americans or not, and regardless of reason. We cannot tolerate this duplicity of our government and we must demand that the US stop spying on all of us before we can go around the world and tell others that they should not be spying on our citizens.

Also, today I just learned that a high ranking US department official -assistant US secretary of state, Victoria Nuland- has made a highly offensive remark towards the EU and the statement was recorded, apparently, by the Russian intelligence services.

Kudos to the Russians not just for recording the conversation in high definition but also for posting it on YouTube. I just love the timeliness of this release and the fact that it shows how hypocritical the US government has become with its international actions.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Lately, Romanians have been made to look like complete and unmistakable losers by the British media.

The sad part is not just that the media are ostracizing an entire nation, but also that the British political class has fully endorsed this state of affair. Entire nations can be made to look bad with extreme ease and this is even truer under the auspices of the British language's dominance of the internet.

What I do want to clarify is that I would like to see statements from the political makers in Romania to make it evident that Romania will never, ever, forget the execrable British attitude towards Romania.

Romania should reserve the right to respond in kind and to the full extent of propaganda to such aberrant attitudes shown by the British media and British authorities.

From a conceptual perspective it is relatively easy for the Romanian government to start promoting hacking -albeit indirectly- of British media and government agencies and do so in such a way that the entire media focus will quickly start to change and begin panicking about real 'problems'.